The present disclosure herein relates to an ion therapy device using an ion beam and a therapy method for removing a tumor using the same.
There are X-ray therapy, electron beam therapy, and ion beam therapy in radiation therapies. It is cheap enough to implement using a simple device, and thus the X-ray therapy is universally used among the radiation therapies. In 1950s, it was proved that a tumor might be treated when an electron was accelerated by an accelerator to be injected to a tumor, but the electron beam therapy actually became one of radiation therapies as the electron accelerator was miniaturized in 1980s. On the other hand, the X-ray therapy or electron beam therapy destructs DNA of a cancer cell by cutting a hydrogen bond in the cancer cell, but accompanies a side effect that healthy cells existing on a travel path of the ray or beam are also seriously damaged. As a method for reducing such a problem that a normal cell is exposed to radiation, techniques such as an intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), tomo therapy, and cyber knife have been developed, but these techniques do not perfectly solve the above described side effects.
The ion-beam therapy draws attention as a therapy means capable of reducing a side effect of the X-ray therapy or electron beam therapy. Similarly to the electron beam, the ion beam should be also accelerated to have a rapid speed so that the ion beam penetrates through a material. Even though the ion beam is gradually decelerated during penetration through a certain material, the ion beam experiences the highest energy loss of ionizing radiation right before stop. Such a phenomenon is called as ‘Bragg peak’ by taking its name from William Henry Bragg who discovered the same in 1903. For the ion beam therapy, when speeds of ions are accurately controlled, malignant tumors may be selectively and locally treated. When a tumor is located deep in a body, a proton or ion having very high energy should be accelerated outside the body.
The Bragg peak of an ion beam incident to body tissues may be differently formed for each patient, even when the ion beam has the same kinetic energy. That is because an error may occur due to different cell components for each organ structure inside the body and for each individual, and an initial condition such as an incidence direction may not be accurate due to an error in position information. Accordingly, it is urgent to develop a technique capable of checking the Bragg peak in real time, while injecting an ion beam into a human body.